We Are the Multitude

In December 2009 I began to feel the urgency of what I was being called to as an artist, activist, and revolutionary. I needed to start making music and art, celebrating community, and initiating my own revolution. I had very concrete ideas about what this would look like: it was a band project with just guitar (my old friend and SnootiBounse band-mate, Edge Quintanilla) and drums (me). The music would be simple, yet beautiful and epic. The lyrics would be about imperialism, globalization, violence; and about the opposites of these - resistance, freedom, and peace.

When I suggested it to Edgar, he was immediately on board. We have been working on new material since, both of us writing poetry and music from afar, as he lives in Chicago. You can read some of my writings for WA™ here.

The name We Are the Multitude was inspired by the writings of Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri, who describes the Multitude as a new model for organization of resistance against the global capitalist system. We want to emphasize that this band is not just about us, but about something much larger and greater: a global movement of resistance, justice, and peace. We stand in solidarity with "the least of these", the poor, oppressed, hungry and naked people of the world, who are suffocating beneath the blanket of global capitalism that has draped our world, a quilt checkered by imperial propaganda and mythical images of perpetual progress, global prosperity, and the Pax Americana.